Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Deputy Boyd Barrett on the Government's attitude and behaviour towards the people of Greece and the Greek Government in the negotiations with the European Union. There is no need to go back over the statistics he quoted. Last week in The Irish Times the Greek Finance Minister, Mr. Varoufakis, published the same figures. This shows the extent to which the Greeks must go to get the message sent out. They certainly cannot rely on our parliamentarians and Government to bring back the message and speak about what the real situation is in Greece and what the Greek people are facing.

It was interesting to see the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, stepping out of line last week at the ECOFIN meeting when he complained that it was asked to discuss proposals that it had not seen. That reminds me a bit of what happens in here at times, when we are brought in to discuss legislation that we have not seen or that has not been published. That is the kind of attitude that prevails.

Finance Ministers are supposedly discussing and agreeing on the future of Greece without having seen the proposals or being able to discuss them in a reasonable manner. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, quickly pulled back into line yesterday when he backed up his friend and master, the German finance Minister, Mr. Wolfgang Schäuble, by berating Greece about the fact that the governing council of the European Central Bank, ECB, must meet every day to decide on emergency financial measures for the Greeks. I wonder did the Minister, Deputy Noonan, get his knuckles rapped for speaking out of line at the Eurogroup of finance Ministers meeting last Thursday, standing up and saying what everybody else knows to be happening.

It is absolutely disgraceful that we have reacted in such a way towards the Greeks, and this Government has demonstrated a distinct lack of backbone and solidarity, when the European Union is supposed to be built on solidarity and people working together. We are playing a part in forcing the Greek people to go through what has happened in the past five or six years. We should support the Greek proposals for a debt conference and their attempts to rebuild their economy and taxation system to ensure they can develop, grow and fund themselves. We should be part of building that coalition to change the direction that the European Union has taken.

The Taoiseach indicated that the crisis in the Mediterranean and migration issues would also be discussed on Thursday. The Taoiseach mentioned the actions discussed last April and how the European Union would deal with the issue, but it is not being dealt with at all. The EU is just trying to plug gaps and holes to stop people getting into the European Union. Does any discussion take place in European Council meetings about the policies and actions of the European Union that have caused this crisis? Two members of the European Union bombed the life out of Libya over the past number of years, causing the entire collapse of civil society there, and that has exacerbated the process. Other actions of the European Union across Africa are feeding into the crisis but we have not seen any discussion of how the European Union will change or develop policies that will allow people to choose to stay in their own countries, so that they would not be forced, through the policies of the West, into seeking to come to the West in order to better themselves.

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